Social Media NYC Recap: Real-Time Social Media Response

Last Thursday, Social Media Club NYC had a meeting about real-time response on social media. The discussion was moderated by board member Danielle Simon, and the guest of the evening was Stephanie Grayson, social media editor at Yahoo Finance.

The Social Media Club NYC meeting began with everyone sharing any interesting social media updates:

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Grayson then had the group put together a list of the risks and rewards of real-time response. Here is the list:

Risks

Rewards

insensitive/incorrect information

damaging brand

backlash

public safety

losing customers/vendors

legal issues

innovative/industry leader

gain credibility

gain customers

gain advocates

gain loyalty from customers

gain PR/marketing

Grayson explains that there are certain dates on an events calendar for a brand where expectations can be set for something occurring. However, there are also events that occur that are not on the calendar and that start trending without any sort of expectation, and people have come to expect a quick response. There are opportunities for real-time response for the events that are not on the calendar, and if there is trust in an organization then you can gain some of the rewards in the above list even if not everyone in the organization is together.

The next part of the meeting was a group exercise, which you too can try:

Instructions: Break into two groups. Each group will become a brand. (One brand will be B2C and the other brand will be B2B.)

Decide: 1) What is the name of your brand? 2) What product/service does your brand provide? 3) Who is your biggest competitor?

*Have someone outside the two group’s make-up a situation that starts trending real-time.*

4) Your brand will react in real-time on social, but how will you do it (i.e., Vine, meme, etc.)? Keep it realistic, so take 25 minutes to come up with a solution.

*Come up with potential real-time backlash that can occur to the opposing group.*

Scenario: A celebrity did something bizarre on Talk Like a Pirate Day and the hashtag is trending like crazy. How is your group going to handle it? What will be your method of real-time response?

They have a big pirate party, because as an agency they are aware of the event and have been tweeting about it all day. They hashjack with the tweet: You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk? #actlikeapirateday. They also have a Vine with people walking like pirates.

They are at a bar and they get seven people to each say, “Yo ho ho and a box of wine,” and they make a Vine of it. They tweet it out saying, “Party like a pirate with Vine&Go,” with the hashtag #vine&go.

The “walk the walk” killed somebody, because they walked off the Brooklyn Bridge.

How does your group deal with the backlash?

No response, because there is no connection to the individual going off the bridge with any of the agency’s messaging. Also there are policies in place on the website saying that everything is for entertainment use.

They would tweet back saying: It is 2013 and 9 out of 10 pirates prefer arrrhh wine. #vine&go